Jack came into the medbay five minutes later. Alice smiled at him, he returned it with a wink behind the Doctor's back. Alice wondered what the two of them had said to each other while she'd been out cold.
'Doc, can I take Megan home now?' Jack asked. 'Ianto's on the case fixing a story to cover her disappearance, and her mother's sleeping off a very mild dose of Retcon, just enough to wipe out what happened in the garden.'
The Doctor checked Megan over one last time, then disconnected her drip, and held a device that Alice didn't recognise over the canola site for a few seconds – when he had finished, the mark from the canola had completely gone.
'Dermal regenerator,' the Doctor explained, seeing Alice's questioning look. 'It's best if we leave as little evidence as we can.' He nodded to Jack, who scooped Megan up easily in his arms, and carried her out of the TARDIS.
'Can I go and see Brenda and Megan when they wake up?' Alice asked the Doctor.
'If it's over four hours from now, then yes,' he smirked, looking at her over his glasses.
'Hmm. Then while I'm stuck here, why don't you start teaching me some of the stuff I need to know? You talked about timelines – can you tell me more about that?'
'Later,' he nodded. 'Timelines are complex, and confusing. Let's start with something simple.'
He cast around in the medbay and came back with two pieces of rock. To Alice's eyes they seemed pretty ordinary grey, jagged lumps. He held them out, one in each hand.
'Try to focus just on the rocks for now – try to ignore everything in the background,' he instructed.
Alice tried. But as she focused her sense of time on the rocks, she quickly became overwhelmed with the sheer complexity of the timescape all around her. She huffed in frustration.
'I don't even know what I'm looking for!' she sighed. 'Is there any way you can show me?'
The Doctor put the rocks down and took his glasses off, folding them and carefully sliding them into his jacket pocket. He bowed his head and rubbed his eyes for a moment before replying.
'Yes, I can show you,' he said, eventually. 'But I'm not sure you'll like it.'
'What do you mean?'
'Last time I was in your head I nearly killed you, Alice. And even if I hadn't? I wasn't exactly gentle, and it was still an unforgivable violation. I wouldn't blame you if you'd been put of telepathy for life.'
Alice considered this. She'd put off thinking about what had happened in the garden, after she and Megan had managed to escape. The mental battle with the Time Lord had been almost more terrifying than the minutes she's spent in the rift, but it all felt more like a dream, and there was still something about the Doctor that made her want to trust him, despite everything. It was about time she made up her mind: either she trusted him wholeheartedly, with her life, and would spend the next however long staying with him while he trained her time sense, or she didn't trust him at all, in which case she would end up walking out of the TARDIS with no time sense anyway.
'I'd like you to try,' she said, finally.
The Doctor nodded, acknowledging that it had taken some courage for Alice to decide to let him in. He adjusted the bed so that Alice could sit up comfortably, then dragged a stool over so that he could sit beside it. He put the two rocks on Alice's lap, on top of the covers.
'Ready?' he asked.
'Just do it,' Alice replied, determined to relax and allow the Doctor to see that she really did trust him.
He scooted a couple of inches closer to her, and then tentatively put his arm around her shoulders so that he could comfortably make fingertip contact with the far side of her face. His fingers still felt cold, and Alice couldn't help tensing.
'Sorry,' she muttered.
'It's me who should be sorry. Do you want to leave this a while longer?'
'No, let's just do it. It'll be OK once I've got used to the idea.'
The Doctor said nothing more. Cool fingers sought out her temple again, and as she closed her eyes, the brush of the Doctor's mind against hers was infinitely gentle. She wondered how much concentration it was taking for him to be this careful.
Beside her, he chuckled quietly. 'A lot,' he replied.
Alice found herself relaxing, and the strange sensation of not being alone in her own head was back again. It actually felt less unnatural this time. Maybe she was getting used to it.
'Look back at the stones,' the Doctor suggested, his voice now speaking directly into her thoughts. She wondered whether he was also speaking aloud.
'No, there's no need,' he laughed back. 'And I'll try not to hear anything that's not intended to be heard, though it's hard in here – do you always think this noisily?'
Alice reflected that she probably didn't, and that the events of the day may have contributed to the high level of thought-traffic going on inside her head. The Doctor gave another mental snort of laughter. It was beginning to feel quite cosy.
'The stones, Alice,' he reminded her. 'Focus on the stones. And I can't believe you think I'm "cosy"!'
'Sorry,' Alice thought, wondering whether visualising a smiley face would work like an emoticon through the telepathic link.
'Please can we concentrate on the task in hand?' the Doctor sighed, exasperated, but still with good humour.
They focused on the stones, and it was quickly so interesting that Alice forgot all her other questions and concentrated entirely on following what the Doctor's thoughts were showing her. She marvelled at the way that the complexities of time seemed so coherent in the background of the Doctor's mind, and she enjoyed seeking out and trying to interpret the much simpler temporal signatures around the two rocks.
...
After quite a bit of practice and coaching, Alice could tell the rocks apart from their temporal signatures alone. She could also sense just a little bit of pride leaking through the telepathic link. But she was also exhausted. The Doctor was right; she really wasn't well, still.
'Time to stop, I think,' said the Doctor in her mind. Not surprisingly, he'd picked up her increasing tiredness.
When he slipped away, Alice felt suddenly and shockingly empty and lonely, and couldn't prevent a soft gasp from escaping. She turned her head quickly to the side as if to reassure herself that the Doctor was still there, now he was no longer in direct contact with her mind.
He looked pretty washed out himself as he extracted his arm from behind her shoulders, and shook it a few times, as if he had pins and needles. Alice recalled him admitting that it took real effort to be so gentle in the telepathic contact.
'You don't often do that, do you?' she asked.
'Hmm? No. Not any more.'
Alice desperately wanted to ask more. There was a profound loneliness about the Doctor just in that moment, but she couldn't find the words to ask him about it. Perhaps it was better that she didn't.
'Go to sleep, Alice,' he said, with a small smile. 'I said four hours, but that's before I completely exhausted you with a two-hour lesson in temporal analysis. When you wake up you'll probably be OK to get up properly.'
Alice nodded, and her eyelids began to droop of their own accord, even before the Doctor had finished lowering the bed back to horizontal. She blinked them open one last time to see the Doctor stand, stretch and rub his face tiredly, before she gladly succumbed to sleep.